ON THE OTHER OCEAN

David Behrman,
electronics, Kim-1 microcomputer; Maggi Payne, flute; Arthur Stidfole, bassoon;
David Gibson, cello. Recording engineers: "Blue" Gene Tyranny and
Richard Lainhart.
Originally released by Lovely Music on LP in 1978; reissued on CD in 1996.

On the Other
Ocean is an improvisation by Maggi Payne and Arthur Stidfole centered around
six pitches which, when they are played, activate electronic pitch-sensing circuits
connected to the "interrupt" line and input ports of a microcomputer,
Kim-1. The microcomputer can sense the order and timing in which the six pitches
are played and can react by sending harmony-changing messages to two handmade
music synthesizers. The relationship between the two musicians and the computer
is an interactive one, with the computer changing the electronically-produced
harmonies in response to what the musicians play, and the musicians influenced
in their improvising by what the computer does.

Figure in a
Clearing, made a few months before On the Other Ocean, was the first
piece of Behrman's to use a computer for music. For Figure, the Kim-1
ran a program which varied the time intervals between chord changes. The time
intervals were modelled on the motion of a satellite in falling elliptical orbit
about a planet. David Gibson's only "score" was a list of 6 pitches
to be used in performance, and a request that he not speed up when the computer-controlled
rhythm did. The timbral richness and concentrated eloquence of his playing sprang
from his own sources.